John’s harbour like a giant flaming arm curling around a shoulder. The towering flames, poisonous smoke, the exploding stores of seal and cod liver oil provoked a flood of people into the streets – men, women and children fleeing homes and workplaces, their possessions stowed in handcarts and wagons or lugged in cloth sacks on their backs through streets where deep sucking mud dogged their every terrified step. The next day a dark sea of ashes backed the finger-piers along the waterfront in a smouldering, stinking sweep from Temperance Street in the east to Springdale Street in the west. Everything but the chimneys, crooked fingers in the eerie landscape, was utterly destroyed. A long reconstruction lay ahead for the weary citizens. The Vail Building, on the northeast corner of the Springdale and Water Street intersection, was built in that reconstruction by an American baker, Robert Vail, who later made a fortune when he came up with a hard bread suitable to the Newfoundland taste.
